Amending my previous comments from June 4th, it occurred to me that rather than moving KXL back to 750 and moving The Game to 970, they could skip the inevitable step and just move KXL straight to 970 and leave 750 alone, since they’re eventually going to want The Game on the stronger signal. KXL listeners aren’t going to want it moved to ANY AM station anyway, so they might as well just bite the bullet now. This is of course assuming that they want to save “We” and it seems inconceivable that they don’t.

At 1.8 in the most recent ratings, KWEE is performing more poorly than the other Alpha-owned FM stations, including KXL-FM. I would not be surprised if the “WE” format were discontinued and the other stations continued as-is.

That’s because it’s a Class C3 and doesn’t have the oomph to compete on a level playing field with the others. I heard two interesting things on Way FM, within about a minute. First, I heard them promote their upcoming move to 96.3 and second, they gave an ID for the station they’re supposed to be protecting, which leads me to believe that the new White Salmon station is also Way FM!

But didn’t the CP on White Salmon expire? I wonder if the deal with Way Media and iHeart Media is going to end so they went in with Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was a Full Power Portland based frequency with Plan B being White Salmon and since they got the Full Power, are going to abandon the CP.

I remembered to tune-in for their legal ID and they legal IDed as “KXXP White Salmon/Portland” that accompanied with the notice to the West Side that signal may be staticy leads me to wonder if they are getting rid of the Translator. But why would they go to rim-shot KXXP when they purchased KWEE. Unless they plan to use KXXP as a way to set up translators across the northern part of the state. Maybe Pendleton?

“But didn’t the CP on White Salmon expire?” I thought I answered this question last night but I must not have submitted it. No, they filed their 302 on June 25th. Joe, there would be no reason to keep the translator if they have a full power station in the same vicinity and it’s possible that they will have to shut it down because of interference to KXXP. If that’s the case, anyone else wanting to use it would have to move it back to 104.7 and tolerate whatever interference there is.

My guess is that WAY-FM struck a deal to simulcast their programming on KXXP for a short period until the 96.3 conversion is complete. It’s a win-win for both parties – WAY doesn’t have to shut off their translator, and the owners of KXXP have content to broadcast while they hold their license looking for a buyer. The KXXP signal is surprisingly strong in PDX. You can hear the two signals competing even on the west side (noticed it on Lombard in Beaverton).

104.5 can’t really be re-engineered and still be viable. The contours overlap on the east side pretty far. Even if moved to 104.7, the directional antenna required would send all of their signal to the west side only, making the signal in Portland unusable. There are no other usable channels to move to, either. The best hope for the 104.5 translator is if the owners of KXXP also take ownership of the translator and continue to simulcast. EDIT: A commercial broadcaster cannot simulcast on a translator they own unless that translator is completely within the service contour of the main – so that option is out.

I haven’t been able to hear them compete at all. Are you sure it isn’t just the translator you’re hearing? I went out as far as the Mt. Hood CC exit and it was still strong but so was 103.7. There were places where the signal dipped and was replaced by “fuzz” but there didn’t seem to be anything underneath it.

I was driving down 205 and got behind Mt. Scott, at which time the signal on 104.5 got fuzzy. I switched to 103.7 and back a few times and it was clear. This means to me that multi-path interference from KXXP was stronger than line-of-sight from the translator. This is the only real indicator I’ve had that KXXP is on the air because switching between the two is flawless!

The way it acted around Sylvan, I think they turned off the translator. The signal dropped nearly to nothing but seemed quite strong on the Banfield and 205, where I had line-of-site. It should be obvious on the west side, if that’s the case, say Beaverton or Hillsboro.

Back to the “WE controversy, it occurred to me that having them move back to AM isn’t any farther out than Kisn FM moving back to 910 14 years ago. In either case, there was a new contract just before and 970 is probably actually a better signal than 910. In both cases, there were seemingly strong enough ratings albeit with older demographics. In the meantime, Way FM now refers to the switchover date as late summer.